You’ve Got to Know Where You’ve Been
by genvessel
Summary: FutureFic: Dad? Can you tell me the story of you and Mom?
1. Chapter 1

Title: You've Got to Know Where You've Been to Get Anywhere at All

Author: Kristen

Date: Winter 2007

Author Note: For some reason, I saw the trailer to the new Ryan Reynolds movie with Abigail Breslin about the girl who makes her dad tell her his love story and I went, "Huh. That would be fun to write." So I did. I promise that finishing Ruined Forever In the Best Way Possible is high on the "to-do" list, but this little plot bunny wouldn't get out of my head.

Summary: Dad? Can you tell me the story of you and mom?

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"Dad?"

"Yeah, pumpkin?"

Without even looking up from the book I was reading, I could hear my daughter's eye roll. "I thought we've discussed your use of that word."

"Yes, we have pumpkin. And I thought we came to conclusion that it is a father's inherent right to call his daughter whatever he damn well pleases as long as she uses his money for her own personal pleasure."

Now we got the out loud sigh. She got that one from her mom.

"Whatever," Lucy sighed. "Listen, I have to write a paper."

"The American education system at its finest."

"I have to write about my family."

"Yeah? Like the six of us?"

"Well, yeah, but mostly about you and mom."

"Why?"

"I don't know, something about knowing where we've come from."

I nodded. "You've got to know where you've been to know where you're going."

"Whatever."

"So you want me to tell you how we met and all of that?"

"Sure, I suppose."

I adjusted myself in the recliner and took a deep breath. "What's that?"

"It's the recorder I'm going to use. You think that I'm really going to be able to remember all of this business?"

"You do have my brain," I remark, wiggling my eyebrows.

"Exactly," she said, winking at me.

I rolled my eyes at her and said, "Where do you want me to start?"

"At the beginning, Dad."

"It's a very good place to start."

"True statement."

I laughed and started, "Well, you need to know a few things. In high school, I played basketball."

"I know."

"And that your mother was a bitch."

"I know."

I laughed, "Well, know also that when I say that I played basketball, I mean I _played basketball_. Whatever guy at your school is _the_ jock, that was me."

"Is that why Uncle Chad calls you playmaker?"

"Yeah, I mean, there are some other reasons for that that came later… but essentially yes."

"Dirty, Dad. Dirty."

I laughed, "Although I had shining moments of glory, I generally had zero backbone because I could always fall back on being the golden boy."

"So you're every boy that I hate."

"Exactly."

"So, how did that make you meet mom?"

"Oh, I've known your mother since we were in about fifth grade. Trust me, Luce, everyone knew your mother. Everyone."

"I can see that."

I nodded, "I didn't hang out with your mom, really, until, senior year."

"The accident?" Lucy got really quiet at that word. It's strange, I know that she's basically a woman and that she's on the cusp of growing up for good and all of that, but every once and a while, my baby girl will pop out.

"Yeah, hon." I said gently. "Are you sure you want to talk about it? I know how you feel about talking about…"

"I just don't like reminding you."

I smiled, "It's okay, baby, I mean, it's part of my life. If you want me to talk about my life, I've got to talk about that night."

She nodded. "It was in high school, right?"

I nodded, and took a deep breath. "My whole life changed in that moment. It was right after the opening game of my senior year."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. It's so cliché. Really simple. The car slipped on ice."

"Ice in New Mexico?"

"Yeah, it can get cold."

"Dad, I am sixteen years old. It has never been cold."

"Global warming, baby. Global warming."

"Whatever. Anyway, so the car slipped on ice."

"Yeah, Uncle Chad was driving."

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. And the girl I dated in high school – "

"The one that got you to sing?"

"Yeah."

"I just love that you sang."

"She was hot."

"Whatever. So hot singing girl was there?"

"We were in the back seat. Chad lost control of the car on the black ice and we started spinning and the next thing I knew, I was in a hospital and I couldn't walk."

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	2. Chapter 2

Author Note: As always, thank you so much for the amazing feedback. I'm kind of excited about this story, mostly because I only know the endgame. I'm not quite sure where the characters will take us, but I'm excited that a lot of you seem to be on the journey.

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"_Whatever. So hot singing girl was there?"_

"_We were in the back seat. Chad lost control of the car on the black ice and we started spinning and the next thing I knew, I was in a hospital and I couldn't walk." _

"Are you serious?"

I nodded, "It was about six weeks later, have I ever told you that?"

My daughter's eyes got really big. Well, that answers that question.

"Like you were in a coma?" Lucy's voice quivered just slightly.

"Well, kind of. The doctors told my parents that my body just couldn't handle all that had happened to it, so it shut down for a little while to rest."

Lucy's face screwed up in slight confusion. "Bodies can do that? And people don't die?"

"It appears so, because I'm not dead."

"Excellent deduction, Sherlock."

"Hardy hard har. You're hilarious."

She grinned at me, "Clearly funnier than you, Dad. Anyway, so you were dead? Or not dead?"

I nodded and took a sip of the iced tea that I had been nursing all afternoon. "Your mom remembers all of my injuries better, but I know that I had two crushed femurs and that my right leg, from the knee down, had gotten so mutilated that they submitted pictures to a medical journal."

"Gross!"

I chuckled, "There was also something about a shattered vertebrae and a crushed pelvic bone."

"Damn, Dad."

"Go big or go home. It's how we roll."

She rolled her eyes, "Lawd, Dad. You are not nineteen."

"I'll have you know that I was cool back in my day."

"Sure."

"No! I was! I mean, we've discussed that I was basically the most popular person in the history of my high school."

"But who is to say that your high school classmates were cool?" My daughter reasoned expertly, "I mean, if they were all losers, then their opinion of you is skewed."

"We were cool, honey child."

We both looked up at the sound of the new voice. Sharpay Bolton, always excellent with the entrances.

"Mom! You're just in time!"

"Yeah, Luce? Why's that?" Sharpay moved from her spot leaning on the doorpost to curl up on the couch next to me.

"Because Dad was telling me the story of how you two fell in love."

"Ah," she said knowingly. "Has he gotten to the part where he was a science experiment yet? The mutilation is my favorite."

"Charming, Shar." I replied, reaching for my iced tea again.

"Mutilation?" Lucy looked a little nauseous.

I threw a look at Sharpay, letting her know that she should pick this one up.

"Grandma has pictures to accompany this story, but I suppose my words will do." Sharpay started. "Your dad's leg was so badly torn apart that the doctors had to amputate it."

"Well, clearly," Lucy said. "He's had that plastic thing my whole life."

"Yeah, well, it was a long journey to finding something that could replace his leg," Sharpay explained. "Because his femur – the bone in his thigh – was so badly shattered, it wasn't really supporting his knee and therefore, when we started – sorry, when he started – physical therapy, he ended up needing a knee replacement."

"Sweet lord, Dad."

"Like I said, go big or go home."

She squeezed up her face, "Couldn't you have chosen to go home?"

Sharpay and I both chuckled. "Oh, if only," I replied.

"But wait, I'm not sure how this places Mom in the picture," Lucy asked.

"We're not telling this story well, dear," Sharpay stated.

"Well, do you want to take over?"

"Sure," Sharpay laughed brightly. Turning to our daughter, she began her narration.

"Luce, you want to know how we fell in love? Well, your dad is right. It did all start with the accident. The accident and then the fall-out of it."

"What do you mean by fall-out?"

Sharpay looked at me, "Are we getting fully honest here? Like do we want to tell her everything?"

"Let me answer that for you," Lucy interrupted. "Obviously, you do."

She chuckled and I told her that she could tell whatever she wanted. She grabbed my hand tightly and turned to our daughter.

"Well, your dad was unconscious for about six weeks, and during that time, everything changed. Gabriella had a complete breakdown, Chad became an alcoholic, and Troy's parents went bankrupt."

"Who's Gabriella?"

"Hot singing girl," I supplied, which received a look from my wife.

"And Uncle Chad became an alcoholic?"

"Yeah," Sharpay answered.

"Damn." Lucy swore, "So, where do you come in, Mom?"

"I saw him naked."

The look on Lucy's face was classic. "I'm sorry, what?"

"It's actually a lot more innocent than it sounds," I cut in. "I was getting a sponge bath –"

"From the nurse that gave you a-"

"Very pleasant feeling," I interrupted. The last thing my daughter needed to hear was the end of that sentence.

Sharpay cocked her eyebrow at me and continued, "If that's what you're choosing to call it. Anyway, I was just dropping by some gifts and I happened to walk in on bath time."

"She was the first person who saw me without a leg who didn't vomit," I supplied quietly.

"See, there's the secret, hon," Sharpay commented. "Don't vomit at their physical deformities. You're in."

"Good to know," Lucy smiled. "So that was it? She didn't throw up, you fell in love and then came me?"

"Exactly like that," Sharpay laughed.

"Really, it was more like how she didn't vomit and then she kept coming back," I said.

"What?"

Sharpay took a deep breath, "I know that it sounds shallow and petty, but when your dad got hurt, East High lost its hero. Your dad, he did a lot and people were not quite used to seeing him not able to move. And so their coping mechanism for that was just to…"

"Stop showing up," I completed. "Besides your mom, I think Uncle Chad was the only one who came to see me in all the months that I was in the hospital."

"Not even hot singing girl?" Lucy asked, and I noticed that even after all these years, Sharpay's face does a funny thing when we talk about Gabriella.

"Well," Sharpay started. "I think she did at first, but then…"

"Then what?"

There was this moment of uncomfortable silence. Shar and I hadn't really talked about Gabi in years. And while I don't remember the events of that night – comatose states help sometimes – Sharpay certainly does.

"Then she died."


	3. Chapter 3

**Authors Note:**Thanks for your reviews on this one, folks. It's going to be a short one overall – only two more chapters to go, but like I said, just couldn't get the plot bunny out of my head.

Hope you track with some of the explanation!

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"_Besides your mom, I think Uncle Chad was the only one who came to see me in all the months that I was in the hospital."_

"_Not even hot singing girl?" Lucy asked, and I noticed that even after all these years, Sharpay's face does a funny thing when we talk about Gabriella._

"_Well," Sharpay started. "She did at first, but then…"_

"_Then what?" _

_There was this moment of uncomfortable silence. Shar and I hadn't really talked about Gabi in years. And while I don't remember the events of that night – comatose states help sometimes – Sharpay certainly does. _

"_Then she died."_

"She died? How long ago?" Lucy's eyes were alight with curiosity.

Sharpay muttered something under her breath that I couldn't quite catch and I squeezed her hand to let her know that. She pursed her lips and replied, "It was twenty-two days after your dad's accident, so … almost twenty-five years ago now."

"Did she die from complications from the accident?" As Lucy pressed Sharpay for more details, I slowly realized that Sharpay was the one person I had never heard this story from. Chad had filled me in on most of the details of East High's reaction, and while Sharpay provided witty commentary, I don't actually recall hearing truth from her.

Sharpay sighed. "Technically, both yes and no."

"Well, that's helpful, Mom. Thanks so much," Lucy snorted.

I saw Shar's eyes glisten with tears. "Lucy, I have… I have literally never talked about this before, so I'm going to need a little patience."

"Sorry," she whispered.

"It's fine, it's just… Anyway, I guess that all the major drama started about three days after the accident. Troy's leg had been official amputated and word had spread around school about everything. Chad and Gabriella weren't back at school yet, but news reporters were crawling all over the place, trying to get everyone's reaction to the two stars of the basketball team being out for the season. I don't think any one really realized how serious Troy's injuries were until he was out of ICU and we could all actually see him. The girl that Chad was dating at the time, her name was Taylor, well, she was Gabriella's best friend and she decided that it was time for Gabi to go visit your dad."

"I'm going to guess that that wasn't the best plan ever?" Lucy interrupted.

"Not really," Sharpay affirmed. "I don't really know if I can express how … completely gross your dad looked."

Lucy and I both chuckled at that and Sharpay gave us a weak smile. "I mean, he had no leg on one side and his face was all torn up and even though they were able to save his arm, he still looked like he was mauled by a puma."

Lucy's face scrunched up in horror. "Gross, Dad."

"Sorry, Luce," I jokingly apologized.

"Well," Sharpay continued. "Like I said, it was about three days after the accident that Gabi first went to visit your dad. From what I hear, she threw up on him."

"Seriously?" I interjected, "I never heard that."

Sharpay nodded. "I mean, she threw up where your leg was supposed to be, so you only got splatter, but still."

Okay, I know that's slightly morbid, but I have to laugh.

"So, after that, the nurses decided that she shouldn't come back, but she kept sneaking in," Sharpay quietly explained. "The party was about three weeks later and at that point, she had spent more hours than was possibly healthy at his bedside, reading stories and singing and just trying everything to wake him up."

"But she wasn't the reason you finally woke up, right?" Lucy asked.

I shook my head. "I woke up two weeks after her funeral."

"Gosh. What a way to break up," Lucy muttered.

"I think the best way to explain what happened at the party was that she and Chad needed to blame something and when it didn't feel right blaming the other person, they blamed themselves."

"Party? Why would they go to a party when Dad was still in the hospital?" Lucy was shocked. "I mean, seriously! That's so irresponsible!"

"Baby," Shar interrupted. "They went because I ordered them to."

Lucy was silent, her face twisted into a shocked face.

"Your mom," I jumped into to explain this part, "was a very focused person."

"Troy, you can't excuse me."

"I'm just trying to explain," I trailed off.

Shar took a deep breath, "Luce, in my humble little, obnoxious opinion, we all needed to move on. And we especially needed to move on because rehearsals were supposed to start for the school musical and Chad and Gabriella were both in it and I needed them to stop moping."

Lucy paused before speaking, which was wise, but eventually came out with, "Mom, I mean, he was in the hospital."

"Oh, I'm aware, Luce. I'm aware," Sharpay admitted. "The other piece in this was that I also wanted to be the one your dad woke up to. So I was trying to get them to move on so that they'd stop coming to the hospital."

"What?"

"You never really believed that I was a bitch until this moment, did you?" Sharpay grinned wryly.

"I mean, geez, Mom. That's intense."

Sharpay nodded, "So, since my grand plan was to have us all party our cares away, I threw a huge blowout."

"So this is three weeks after the accident?" Lucy clarified. "And Dad is still unconscious?"

"Yeah, it was this really awkward holding pattern, because they knew that there was about seven more surgeries to go until he was normal again, but they couldn't do any of them until he woke up."

"Gross."

Sharpay chuckled softy, "So the night of the party, I really did want Gabriella to feel better. I did have a shred of human decency in me and I could tell the girl was in pain. So, I medicated her."

"You what?"

"I…. I spiked her drink. Hers and Chad's."

I could see Lucy having trouble processing this all. "You spiked their drinks?"

"I promise that I had no idea that they were going to react like that, I swear," Sharpay whispered softly.

I squeezed my wife's hand and looked at my daughter, "It appears that Gabi had also been taking a whole lot of caffeine pills so that she could stay awake at my bedside and then also keep up with her studying. All your mom added to her punch was whiskey, nothing illegal, but it just reacted funny with her system."

"The thing was, she just kept drinking, so we just thought she was completely wasted," Sharpay was staring straight at the floor. The way she was talking, I wasn't even sure if she remembered that we were in the room with her. It was just processing. "I mean, we're not bad people, we made sure that she wasn't approaching alcohol poisoning or anything. Ryan distinctly remembers taking the bottle from her before she went upstairs, so she wasn't drinking up there, but…"

I saw Lucy open her mouth to ask what happened next, but I held up my hand.

"I will just never, ever forget walking in on her. Ever," Sharpay whispered through the gathering tears. "She was so obviously dead. I screamed and threw up and paused and screamed and collapsed, it was like my body was physically incapable of handling what my eyes were seeing."

"From what the crime scene people could gather," I supplied quietly to Lucy, "she was trying to take a shower and was really too out of it to function, so she slipped and knocked her head open and then bled out before anyone could find her."

"The thing was, we all knew that Gabi wasn't a drinker, so someone should have noticed when she went from punch to the entire bottle of Jack Daniels," Sharpay muttered. "I guess, I mean, my plan was to make her forget and she seemed to be forgetting so I wasn't going to stop her."

"Mom," Lucy asked quietly. "You don't think you killed her, do you?"

Sharpay's face contorted into an ugly grimace as she attempted to hold back the tears. "Oh, I know it's not my fault, baby. But, it is at the same time."

"It's been a lot of years of therapy," I smiled gently.

There was silence for a few minutes as Shar tried to pull herself together. I knew that she still blamed herself, but I just had no idea…

"You said that you also spiked Uncle Chad's drink," Lucy interrupted the silence gently.

This one I could answer. "Yeah, but Uncle Chad is just a loud drunk. From everything I've heard, he was just uncontrollably obnoxious. He yelled at Gabi for distracting him while driving and then yelled at everyone in the room for not visiting me and then yelled at his girlfriend for not having sex with him since the accident."

"At that point, the girlfriend dragged him upstairs to a room. We're not quite sure what Taylor did to him up there, but when he dried out the next morning, he was sporting quite the black eye," Sharpay remarked.

"He yelled at Gabi? Did he blame her for the accident?" Lucy asked.

"I believe that he did, baby," Sharpay replied.

I could tell that Lucy was about to launch into a long and glorious monlogue of how clearly Sharpay didn't need to blame herself, that Gabi was maybe reacting to Chad and, and, and… but Shar had heard that from most of the people in her life for the past few decades and it was not something she was planning on changing her mind about.

"So, they had her funeral and I woke up without a leg and without a girlfriend. Traumatic," I transitioned.

Sharpay grinned at me, "But you did love what you woke up to."

"Oh, more than I have words for, sweetheart," I replied, chuckling. "More than I have words for."


End file.
